Modernizing Curriculum Review Workflow

Weekly Assignments

Week 1

• Install SharePoint and Visual Studio.
• Complete the course "SharePoint 2010 Getting Started" on Lynda.com.
• Think about the design for a document hosting site for the first stage of the project.

Submission (Due: Tuesday 10/2)

• A screen shot of Lynda.com like this one. Of course yours should show that the "SharePoint 2010 Getting Started" course is 100% completed.
• A screen shot of the Visual Studio New Project page like this one.

Please upload these files to CSNS under CS496A Homework 1.

Week 2

• Complete Chapter 5-9 of the course "SharePoint 2010 Essential Training" on Lynda.com.
• Create a SharePoint site called "Curriculum Review".
  • The site should have at least one document library called "Course Proposals".
  • Create two users cysun and rpamula.
  • Create two groups: Faculty and Computer Science Department Chair. cysun should be in the first group and rpamula should be in both groups.
  • Give permissions to the Faculty group to edit documents; give permissions to approve documents to the Computer Science Department Chair group.
  • Set up an approval workflow so that each document uploaded by a member of the Faculty group needs to be approved by a member of the Computer Science Department Chair group.

Submission (Due: Tuesday 10/9)

• Screenshots showing course progress on Lynda.com and the SharePoint site you created.

Week 3

• Install SharePoint Designer 2010 if you haven't done so.
• Complete Chapter 1-7 of the course "SharePoint Designer 2010: Building Custom Workflows" on Lynda.com.
• Use some diagramming tool like Visio, PowerPoint (or even Sticky Notes as the workflow course suggested) to diagram the course proposal review workflow as we discussed in the first group meeting. In your diagram, clearly identify the users (e.g. faculty, department chair, ...), units (e.g. department, college, undergraduate study office, Educational Policy Committee, ...), actions (e.g. upload, approve, email, give feedback), and constraints (e.g. feedback must be received within 7 days) that are involved in the process.

Submission (Due: Monday 10/15)

• Screenshots of installed SharePoint Designer and Lynda course progress.
• The course proposal review workflow diagram.

We will meet on Tuesday 10/16 to discuss your diagram and how to implement it using SharePoint workflow.

Week 4

• Finish the course "SharePoint Designer 2010: Building Custom Workflows" on Lynda.com.
• Look for information about cross-site/cross-subsite workflow and action in SharePoint. In particular, we want answers to the following questions:
  • Can we create a workflow that involves more than one site (or subsite)?
  • Can we perform an action that involves more than one site (or subsite), e.g. copy a document from one site to another?

Submission (Due: Tuesday 10/23)

• Screenshots of Lynda course progress.
• Information about cross-site workflow and action.

We will NOT meet next Tuesday, but if our development server arrives, I may ask you individually to help me with setup and installation.

Week 5 and Week 6

It seems like cross-site workflow is not a built-in feature of SharePoint 2010, so we'll have to a) use document routing which is limited in terms of collecting feedback from multiple sources (Bruce), or b) create some custom workflow activity (Michael, Young), or c) use one document library with many security groups (Bruce). I'm not convinced (c)  would work because it's not just that the number of security groups could potentially be large, but also SharePoint may not have enough security levels that we can assign to each group. However, there might be a way to combine (a) and (c) so we can avoid writing code. We'll discuss this at the next meeting.

While we wait for the new development server (which is taking longer than I expected), we will start writing the requirement specification. Please have a look at some samples, then complete your portion of the document as assigned below:

Kristine will create a Google Doc to share with everybody so everyone can work on the same document.

Due: Monday, 11/5

I understand it's midterm time, so we won't meet on next Tuesday. The first draft of the requirement specification must be completed by the due date. We'll meet on Tuesday 11/6 to discuss the document and the design.

Week 8

Everything in the requirement specification needs to be rewritten except the Overall Description section. Please complete the 2nd draft by Monday 11/19. We'll meet on Tuesday to discuss it.

Week 9

Revise the requirement specification based on my comments. The 3rd draft is due by Tuesday 11/27 before our meeting. We'll discuss it one more time at the meeting.

Week 10

Finalize the requirement spec. The final draft is due on Wednesday 12/5.

Prepare for the presentation on Friday 12/7. Please have your presentation slides ready by Tuesday 12/4. We'll go over them at our meeting.